Leaked Emails Show How Scared Hollywood Is Of Google

Leaked emails from
the hack against Sony show that major movie companies are
working together with the Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) on a project aimed to stop a company known as "Goliath."

It's pretty clear they're referring to Google.

The Verge first reported
on an email from one of the MPAA's top lawyers, Steven Fabrizio,
laying out Hollywood's strategy against Goliath.

"We start from the premise that site blocking is a means to an
end," said Fabrizio.

But what stands out from the leaked emails is that the major
studios, who normally compete against each other, are banding
together with the MPAA to defeat an enemy they can't even bring
themselves to name.

It's like when Harry Potter characters call Voldemort "he who
must not be named."

It sounds like the MPAA wants to develop a technical solution to
the problem of piracy but doesn't know what that would be yet:
"Very little systematic work has been completed to understand the
technical issues related to site blocking in the US and/or
alternative measures IPSs [sic] might adopt."

Hollywood is also afraid of bad publicity coming from anything
the industry tries to do against Google: "In the post-SOPA world,
we need to consider the extent to which a strategy presents a
risk of a public-relations backlash," Fabrizio said.